ABSTRACT: The trans-party choice made by the PR has objectively transferred persons, energies and resources into other political subjects. What tasks and opportunities remain for the Radical Trans-party Party? The author proposes a consideration of two possibilities: a frail confederation of members of other parties or a strong organisation capable of ensuring additional values with respect to the politics of the national parties?

(Notizie Radicali no. 174 of August 12, 1989)

Existential anguish has always been a travelling companion of that anomalous subject, that mysterious political animal which is the Radical Party. (The kind, to make things clear, that comes from the constant disparity between its ambitions and its resources, between its ends and its means; but, above all, it has been the necessary consequence of an insecurity deriving from its refusal to moderate its political struggle and have it participate as a power recognising the system that it wants to reform.) Now another anguish has been added, more insidious and serious because inherent in the most recent choices of the Radical Party, in the choices of the last few years or even months.

We have successfully preached and practised the choice of becoming a trans-party party, we have encountered predictable difficulties along this road but also great successes (contrary to the trans-national choice where the difficulties have been many and the successes few), but now a question pursues us during our days and nights and feeds our anguish: and now that we have created the trans-party party, now that the resources, the militant energy, a great part of our hopes and undertakings have been dispersed and disseminated along various political fronts, what remains of the party?

Old and new anxieties add up. Certainly, one begins to think, the situation would be different if the trans-party choice had been more successful in the outward direction and had brought into the P.R. a greater number of Communists and Social Democrats, of lay people and ecologists, of Socialists and Christians. But we must come to terms with reality, and reality today is made up of traditional Radicals who have committed themselves on diverse national political fronts much more than it is made up of militants and leaders of other parties who commit themselves to the Radical Party to make of it the international super party of non-violence, of human rights, of democracy. The adherence of Bordon is for the moment only a hope, the membership of the ecologist Lanzingher important for us to the degree that he is rather isolated among the ecologists of the "smiling sun", the membership of the Socialist Borgoglio a courageous act against the faction that is pushing for an ever greater division of the Radicals

and the Socialists, while the presence among us of comrades Pagani and Caria is a result of the post-election impasse of Radical action within the PSDI (Social Democrats). Outside of Italy we have had the important membership of Shulamit Aloni, the prestigious leader of the Israeli RATZ (civil rights movement) and little else. All together these are still only possibilities and not a rich and living reality which would give quite another sense and value to the two conflicting priorities: the one deriving from being at one and the same time a Radical and a Communist, Socialist or ecologist or Social Democrat and Radical. The contradiction risks instead being entirely on the part of the Radical Party: of Radicals first committed only to the Radical Party and today, also and above all, engaged in other political commitments.

The question "Having chosen the trans-party party, what remains of the party?" thus presents itself again in another way: "Having chosen to commit oneself on one of the other political fronts, what is left of one's commitment to the party?"

It will be useful to remember that we have all of us, or almost all of us, created and programmed this choice together with the exception of those who until the last moment have instead asked that we present a Radical Party list of candidates for the elections. Thus it cannot become a reason for accusing those who in implementing the choice have assumed the ensuing commitments on the part of those (myself, for example) who have not made choices or taken political and election initiatives. But nevertheless the problem exists. It should be faced with theoretical clarity, with political commitment and tension, with great moral clarity, otherwise a new element of Italian political renewal will become a lacerating contradiction for us.

Thus, without allowing myself to be conditioned by accusations from both sides (you do well to speak who having made your commitments do not even run the risk) which could weigh on me, I have opted to open the debate on this question.

I do so by formulating an axiom and putting a few questions.

It seems to me that we should all agree that if the Radical Party continues to exist and to overcome the problems that characterise its primary anxiety it cannot be the result of the prevailing commitment of all those who have not registered with other parties and engaged themselves on other political fronts and of the secondary and residual commitment of all the others. And not even of those who, having had less success or even no success at all in their trans-party initiatives, return to their commitments to the PR. It is evident, in fact, that the first (the non-committed), if our choices remain valid, should be impelled to engage themselves on the trans-party front, taking their initiatives and making their choices; and the second should commit themselves even more because it is harder to face a failure than a success.

And now to the questions.

Are we bound to consider the Radical Party as a second-rate organisation, as a weak confederation of members from other parties and movements or associations? Or must the Radical Party remain a strong organisation, capable of ensuring and representing additional values with respect to the policies of the national parties and organisations and the internationals?

Can this trans-party super-party, trans-national and supra-national only be conceived as something enormous on the financial and organisational level, or is it possible instead to conceive of it not as a minimal or small party but a poor and militant one? And is it possible that this party of Franciscan poverty can - possibly by turning to others and trying to get them involved - create instruments for the creation and management of expensive media (telecoms, translation centres, foundations, etc.)?

The characteristic of this Radical Party, the element of consensus, the connecting tissue of this trans-party party - does it only regard the trans-national aspects of political reform, or - as I believe - does there, in the midst of Radicals committed on various political fronts, continue to exist in the autonomous life of the parties in which they are participating, a mutual strategic plan of the reform of the alliances and the subjects of party-power politics and reform of the political system? The four fronts of our election policies arose precisely from a debate and a confrontation in a Federal Council (the one of Bohinj). Now that this strategy has been successful, to the point of exciting those reactions of Craxi [Socialist Party leader, ed.], must we fear seeking and constructing mutual strategies and plans, or must we rather strongly re-affirm one of the motives that impelled us to make the trans-party choice and accomplish it: the reform of the party-power system?